


Second Chances

by eriah211



Category: Primeval
Genre: Dinosaurs, Gen, Team, Teamwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 12:21:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9607388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eriah211/pseuds/eriah211
Summary: Abby isn’t sure if the new recruit is going to make her job easier or more difficult.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Livejournal in 2013. Written for the Primeval_Denial Art Challenge 2013. Thanks to the wonderful fififolle for the beta and patience and to lonely_candle for the lovely artprompt that inspired the story.

It could have been worse, Abby thought while she knelt on the floor, because although it was a sunny day, the weather was still so cold that not many people were in the park so early in the morning. When the anomaly had opened in the middle of the park and a creature had come through it though, a man who was jogging had been fast enough to take a picture with his mobile phone before it disappeared between the trees of the forest that bordered the park. Jenny was working her magic on the man, trying to convince him that what he had seen had just been some kind of advertising campaign for Jurassic Park’s re-release, but Abby was more worried about the trail of blood left by the creature.  
  
“There isn’t much blood, but there’s a visible trail along the tracks,” Abby explained, pointing at the prints on the ground. “It must be hurt.”  
  
“Good!”  
  
Abby got up and turned around to look at the soldiers. She hadn’t seen who had said it, but she didn’t have much trouble identifying him: the new recruitment, Jason Connolly, if she recalled the name correctly, looked quite excited on his first mission in the ARC team. The new soldiers were the most difficult to deal with, since most of them just saw the creatures as targets, instead of beings that needed help. Abby sighed and wished Connor was there to back her up instead of in the ARC, stuck on an upgrade of the anomaly detection device.  
  
“No, it isn’t good,” Abby started to explain calmly. “It means that we’ll have to deal with a wild creature that’s scared and hurting and that’ll probably react violently if cornered.”  
  
“I think this one would react violently anyway if we came closer, Abby,” Stephen said coming closer. “You‘ve seen the tracks.”  
  
“What is it?” Ryan asked them.  
  
“Well, they’re theropod’s footprints, but small ones,” Abby answered. “It’s probably a very young one.”  
  
“They don’t look that small to m-. Oh.” Ryan sighed. “Tyrannosaurus? Giganotosaurus?”  
  
“It’s difficult to tell, the footprints aren’t very clear on this ground,” Stephen said. “But, yes, probably one of those.”  
  
“But it’s a juvenile,” Abby hurried to add. “We have to find it before it can hurt itself further or hurt others. And since it’s injured, it’ll be trickier to capture it,” she added looking pointedly at the new soldier.  
  
“OK, the anomaly’s locked and we know where to start looking,” Ryan said to the team. “We have to capture it, but remember it’s wounded and it’s dangerous, I don’t want any of you taking stupid risks.”  
  
Ryan looked at Abby pointedly and she, ignoring the hint, just turned around and started to follow Stephen into the forest.  
  


***

  
Abby also got the impression that Ryan had assigned the newbie to her tracking team on purpose, but what for, she had no idea. The tracks were fairly obvious, but they had decided to split up to surround the creature, and Ryan had taken Stephen and a few soldiers with him, leaving Abby with the rest of the SF. Connolly, Abby noticed, was less exultant now, but she was still going to keep her eye on him just in case. It wasn’t going to be difficult because he seemed to be stuck to her anyway, and she wondered if that too had something to do with Ryan or if it was just that the new soldier had decided that she was a frail woman who needed protection.  
  
The track led them deep into the forest and, without much difficulty, they found the creature sniffing and scratching the ground in a small clearing, somehow oblivious to them. The wound on its back, which was still dripping blood, was noticeable even from where they were hiding behind the trees. They were trying to be quiet, but Abby wondered how long it would take the creature to notice them or the other team, which she could see positioned not too far from them, about ten metres to her left. Probably not too long, she decided while reaching for the tranquillizer gun, once it got tired of whatever it had found.  
  
“Is that a T-Rex? I’ve always thought it would be…” Connolly whispered, by her side.  
  
Please, don’t say “bigger”, Abby begged to herself, cringing.  
  
“…well, different.” Connolly finished his thought.  
  
“It could be a different species. Juvenile specimens of the big theropods were supposed to look quite different from their adult appearance. Well, there haven’t been many fossils of young theropods found, but that’s their latest theory,” Abby explained to him. It was a good thing that Connor always liked to keep his database updated and that he kept her informed.  
  
The creature was almost 2 metres tall and it had a strong and long tail and short forearms, but not the characteristic big head of a T-Rex so often shown on films and tv. Its head was considerably smaller and elongated, but it had some impressive big teeth, which it surely knew how to use.  
  
Suddenly the creature lifted its head and started sniffing around.  
  
“It’s discovered us,” Abby whispered to her team.  
  
She lifted the tranquillizer gun, but Stephen, shooting from the other side of the clearing, was faster. His shot didn’t miss the target and the creature, startled, tried to find the source of the sudden pain. They seemed to have found the correct dosage for the creatures, after much trial and error. They basically dosed according to their weight, and Abby was almost sure one dart would be enough to knock it out so she just waited for the creature to fall, with the gun ready, just in case. After all, she was almost sure, not absolutely sure.  
  
Connolly seemed to have skipped the class about tranquillizers because he was already aiming his gun to the creature, to Abby’s dismay.  
  
“We’ve got it covered,” she whispered. “It’ll fall down in a moment!”  
  
“It’s just in case, miss,” he answered calmly without lowering his gun.  
  
Great, Abby thought, another guy who thinks that he can ignore what I say as long as he calls me “miss”. She wondered if she was going to have to use the tranquillizer on him, but just at that moment the creature collapsed, finishing their discussion.  
  


***

  
They treated the creature’s wound as well as they could before taking it back to the anomaly. Judging by the size of the bite mark on its back, it looked like the creature, which they had decided was quite probably a very young male T-Rex, had been about to become the meal of a much bigger predator, but had managed to run away.  
  
“Connor would love to see this,” Abby commented excitedly. “A young tyrannosaurus!”  
  
“You can take as many pictures for him as you like, but this one goes back through the anomaly as soon as we get there,” Ryan said immediately. “I don’t want to think what Lester would say if we asked him for a place in the menagerie for a tyrannosaurus.”  
  
“Of course, Ryan, don’t worry,” Abby said smiling. “Sid and Nancy wouldn’t like the company either.”  
  
Getting him back to the anomaly wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. Young or not, he was still almost 2 metres tall and weighed “like a fucking elephant”, in the words of the soldiers who were carrying him on a big metallic stretcher.  
  
“Impressive, isn’t it?” Abby asked Connolly, who was walking by her side.  
  
“When I signed the Official Secrets Act and they finally told me what this was all about, at first I thought it was all a big joke,” he explained with a big smile on his face. “Real dinosaurs!”  
  
“I could say that you’ll get used to this, but it would be a lie,” Abby said, smiling back. “It never ceases to amaze me.”  
  
Connolly nodded happily and Abby thought that maybe she had judged the new soldier too quickly after all, but experience had taught her not to trust people with guns around animals; they usually carried the guns to use them, not because they were fashion accessories.  
  
Abby took a few more photos for Connor on their way back to the anomaly. She wanted to take a close up of his jaw, also quite different from the adults’, but it was difficult to get a decent shot while they were moving. She tried anyway and then checked the photographs to see if any of them was good enough. Most of them were a bit blurry and instead of his jaw she had photographed his closed eye or his neck so they weren’t very useful. Then she saw it: in one of the pictures the eye of the tyrannosaurus was open.  
  
“Watch out! He’s waking up!” Abby shouted. It looked like they hadn’t mastered the correct dosage of tranquillizer after all.  
  
The young tyrannosaurus was waking up slowly, there wasn’t imminent danger yet, but the anomaly was still quite far and the movements of the long tail were making it harder to keep moving at a good pace. The neck was tied to the metallic stretcher by a strong strap and so were the legs, but there was no way to tell for sure if that was going to be enough once the T-Rex was fully awake.  
  
“Can’t you dose him again?” Ryan asked.  
  
“It would be too much, it’s too soon after such a strong dosage,” Abby explained.  
  
“We still have enough time to get to the anomaly and leave him on the other side,” Stephen added. “If we hurry up.”  
  
The last metres to the anomaly were the hardest ones. The creature was already half-awake, trying to stand up, and every sudden movement made the stretcher rock violently. The T-Rex’s tail gave a violent shake, hitting one of the soldiers who was holding the stretcher and it almost fell to the ground, but they managed to steady it and while Abby helped the soldier up, Stephen took his place and they kept moving forward.  
  
The moment they arrived at the anomaly, Ryan ordered to open it and sent a scouting party through it.  
  
“He’s hurting himself trying to get free,” Abby told Ryan. “We have to go to the other side and let him free now.”  
  
“I know, Abby, but we aren’t going through the anomaly without knowing if it’s safe,” Ryan replied firmly.  
  
Abby sighed and watched the creature twisting on the stretcher. Then she saw that the soldiers were getting the new weapons the team had recently incorporated into their armoury, and her frown deepened.  
  
“Flames are better than bullets,” Stephen said, appearing by her side. “I thought you were happy when we bought the flamethrowers. They’re effective and less lethal.”  
  
“I would be happier if the creatures didn’t get hurt at all,” Abby said. “But you know what they say: you can’t always get what you want, but you can get what you need.”  
  
“We’ll need those too, if we want to free him without losing any body parts,” Stephen added, handing her a pair of extra long bolt cutters, keeping a pair for himself.  
  
“There weren’t bigger ones, I suppose?” Abby said, taking the cutters.  
  
“Size isn’t everything, Abby,” Stephen replied grinning. “You should know better than that.”  
  
The scouting party came back about a minute later, although it felt like hours for Abby, and they reported to Ryan.  
  
“It looks clear and we don’t have much time,” Ryan told the team, “so it’ll have to do. Let’s move and end this.”  
  
The scouting party went through the anomaly first and the soldiers who were carrying the stretcher tried to follow them as quickly as possible while Stephen, Abby and Ryan followed them.  
  
Once on the other side of the anomaly Abby couldn’t help but stare and gape. She had meant what she had said to Connolly before, she would never get used to the amazing sights they discovered every time they went through an anomaly. This time they were in a vast forest, full of huge trees that almost blocked the sun and there were hundreds of different tones of green everywhere. There were so many beautiful things to discover there, but, as usual, there was no time for that.  
  
As soon as the soldiers left the stretcher on the floor, Abby turned to Stephen.  
  
“I’ll cut the neck strap; you do the one on the legs,” she said to Stephen.  
  
Stephen nodded and they both kneeled by the creature’s side, getting ready.  
  
“On the count of three,” Abby said. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the soldiers taking an alert stance around them, some of them holding the flamethrowers. “One, two, three!”  
  
Not my lucky day, Abby thought when her pincers failed to cut the strap. Stephen’s, on the other hand, cut the strap at the first attempt and the T-Rex got his legs free.  
  
“Come on!” Abby grunted to herself, trying again. The creature was redoubling his efforts to stand up and so much movement made her cutters slip from the strap.  
  
Stephen had to dodge a nasty kick by throwing himself to the ground and Abby was about to try again when she felt a hand grabbing her arm and pulling her away. She managed to break free and turned angrily to face Connolly, who was trying to grab her by the arm again.  
  
“It’s too dangerous, miss,” he said.  
  
“We can’t leave him like that, we would be sentencing him to a slow death!” Abby replied furiously.  
  
Abby looked around and saw that Stephen seemed to be having the same frustrating conversation with Ryan, who was preventing him from getting near the creature again.  
  
“We just have to try one more time and -“ Abby stopped in mid-sentence at the sound of a distant roar. And she was not the only one, even the T-Rex froze for a moment before frantically trying to escape again.  
  
The soldiers stared worriedly at the part of the forest where the roar seemed to have come from and Abby jumped at the chance. She grabbed the cutters hard and dodged Connolly, going back to the creature’s side again.  
  
He was still moving a lot, almost twisting the stretcher enough to stand up, and Abby tried to get a good position for the cutters, but it looked almost impossible to do. Suddenly Connolly appeared by her side, startling her. She was ready to fight back, if he tried to drag her away again, but he just threw himself onto the tail of the creature while holding down the stretcher with all his might.  
  
“That’s it!” Abby shouted when finally the bolt cutters cut the strap.  
  
A second later the T-Rex stood up, quite faster than any of them could have imagined, and a sudden flame was shot over Abby and Connolly’s head. Although he was still a bit confused by the drugs, the creature got the hint and moved away from them. A second roar, much closer than the first one, made him decide to run in the opposite direction.  
  
Abby stared at the creature while he ran away, a bit clumsily, but steadily enough, and smiled.  
  
The approaching sound of steps reverberating on the ground was their cue to leave. They took the stretcher and went through the anomaly as fast as they could. Seconds later the anomaly was locked again and they could all take a deep breath.  
  
“Wow, he was a tough little bugger, wasn’t he?”  
  
Abby turned around and saw Connolly looking at the now closed anomaly with a big smile on his face.  
  
“Do you think he has a chance of survival?” he asked, turning to her.  
  
“Well,” Abby said thoughtfully, “he was almost fine by the time we set him free, I think he would have had a chance to run away. He also has a good chance of recovering from his wound. And that’s all we want for them: a chance to survive and to keep living in their own world.”  
  
“So that’s what we do here?” he asked.  
  
“Yes, that’s what we do here,” Abby answered, smiling back at him.  
  
“Cool!” Connolly said with a big grin on his face. And Abby couldn’t help but agree with him.  
  
  
END


End file.
